Richard Vansiclen Planning To Bring “The Vibes” To Verona

Being inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) in Canastota, New York, is a dream for many boxers. About every year since 1997, the IBHOF have held a Hall of Fame Induction weekend scheduled over four days with many events. One event boxing fans look forward to is live boxing at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, roughly 20 minutes from the IBHOF. Past events have featured Shannon Briggs, Regis Prograis, and Ruslan Provodnikov.

This year, ShoBox: The New Generation returns with a tripleheader at the venue on Friday, June 9. One of the fights is a light heavyweight bout between Richard “The Vibes” Vansiclen (13-0-1, 6 KOs) and Juan Carrillo (10-0, 8 KOs). Ahead of their clash, Big Fight Weekend spoke to Vansiclen on the journey he has taken to get to this stage and his views on his upcoming clash with Carrillo.

Early life and amateur career

Vansiclen was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Raised by a single mother, his family was in and out of homeless shelters. Growing up, his mother ensured that he received a college education.

“She didn’t know what it meant because nobody in my family had been to college. But she’s like ‘you’re going to going to college.’ I kept getting the good grades in high school, kept doing doing sports in high school, excelled at everything. That college experience gave me a lot of knowledge in life.”

It was in college where he got his start in boxing at the age of 19.

“Boxing came while I was in college. It [college] was meant to be a perfect storm for me to accelerate in life and in boxing…I hadn’t boxed ever when I was younger.”

In fact, he was not a fan of fighting in general as a child.

“My brother would get other kids in the neighbourhood to come fight me and I hated it. If he fought me my mom would discipline him so he would get the neighbourhood kids to fight me.”

This all changed upon entering college when he joined the University of Washington boxing team.

“It’s a club sport but we’re going up against the US military academy who have all this funding and [where] it’s a varsity sport at their school. They all this training, all these facilities and in college, we didn’t have any of that. It was kind of like growing up, I didn’t have anything but you had really good coaches like Ricardo Acuna and Christopher Mendez. These guys really gave those principles in college when I was 19 years old.”

Working with Acuna

His trainer Acuna also joined us on the call and spoke about how he found Vansiclen.

“He went through a boxing bootcamp in 2013. Part of the experience is to overcome the bootcamp. It has nothing to do with boxing and more to see if you have the character and the will and the heart to join the boxing team. Richard exceeded our expectations in bootcamp and when he was accepted and we asked him to be a part of the team, he showed more interest in learning and understanding the game.”

“He’s the kind of guy I need to ask to leave the gym…He decided to go pro and we’ve been in his corner ever since. Everyday he shows me something new. Everyday he’s always willing to learn and to really reciprocate all the knowledge and apply it in every sparring and fight.”

As an amateur, Vansiclen had 50 bouts, winning 45 of them. He made it to the 2015 US Olympic Trials but missed out on a spot to the 2016 Olympics. In September of 2016, he embarked on his professional boxing career.

On being part of Hall of Fame Weekend festivities

“It feels really good to be here. To be honest, it feels right…It feels like it’s my time,” said Vansiclen of the opportunity to fight on this Friday’s card.

His opponent, Carrillo, spent a significant amount of time representing Colombia in the amateurs. He has competed in the World Boxing Championship and took part in the 2016 Olympics. Vansiclen was clear to explain that Carrillo’s amateur pedigree will not matter much when they face each other.

“This isn’t the amateurs anymore. We can talk about the amateurs all day. I had a good amateur background for how long I did it. To me, it’s about what you did in the pros. So far in the pros, I would say out of the two of us, I have the more experience by far with the amount of people I have fought and the skill level of the people I have fought. [I’m] not too concerned about the amateur background. It looks good on the resume but when it comes to professional boxing, I’d say I’m the more experienced of out of the two.”

Given the platform he is on, he ensured that he is looking for the knockout and to make as big of an impression as possible.

“I’m always looking for something like that. If it comes, I’m getting it…Sky’s the limit for “the Vibes,” because the vibes are working really hard and I feel like it is an opportunity to showcase those skills and come away with a very decisive win.”